Roses and Lilies
by mercurian.angst
Summary: i was so discontent with the ending of Corpse Bride after watching it 5 times in a row. So here goes. there's no set pairing, actually. If you want one it's literally VxVxE. Not a triangle. I still don't know what to do with the rest of this, so stay


He shouldn't have stuck the ring on the finger-like branch. He should never have done it. Because it turned out to be a finger, in the end.

2 years on those thoughts just kept echoing on through his mind. Victoria sat across him in her armchair sewing; basking in the heat from the crackling fire like a contented housecat.

A house cat. Who sometimes showed flashes of something; of wanting to rebel beneath her gentle and quiet demeanour. But it was something that he, Victor, could never quite see fully. Then again understand wasn't a word to use; he knew how to make her smile(well, sort of. It generally involved him walking into a door) and he knew how to make her forgive him after a heated quarrel(which was always because of something he had said inadvertently). He was happy with her, in the house they shared on the London outskirts. But it was a domestic sort of happiness. Caritas.

Once a week since that day he had gone to cemeteries and graveyards looking for her grave. Victoria never questioned him about that; he was happy that she understood without a word between the both of them; just sent him off with a peck on the cheek and a ' Take care, Dear.' He would probably spend the rest of his life looking for it; except from what he heard in the pub the first night(she died under a tree) Victor realised that he hadn't really known much about Emi--.

" No" He shook his head, it was better not to think about her, not until he had found her grave or erected one for her. It was as if the mere mention of her name gave her earthly chains once again.

"Victor? What's the matter?"

"Nn-n-nothing, Victoria."

"You looked rather sad. Confused. An after-effect of walking into 3 doors and a lamp-post the other day when we went out?"

" My dear, I've walked into so many objects that I should have become immune by now. I've even stopped questioning why I've the habit of doing so. "

" One never knows. Inventors should enlist you to test their inventions in terms of destructibility. How you managed to break nearly all the plates in the pantry I will never know." There was that slight hint of sarcasm in her dulcet tones.

He started up.

" Please forgive me I didn't mean to I just wanted to make you-" There it was. That slight twitch at the corners of her mouth that meant she was amused.

" It was a joke" Victoria was laughing now, hiding her laughs with one hand.

. She would have just thrown her head back and laughed out loud.

" Emily." He said it unthinkingly and Victoria's laugh snapped off as if her mother had come into the room and discovered her not wearing corsets.

That name hung in the stagnant air between them.  
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

They had never once discussed what happened in those 3 days since their marriage.

Victoria bent down, furrowed brow over her sewing.  
" I've found her grave."  
Well that certainly got his attention. It rocketed him out of his own armchair. And tripped him face down onto the rug.

"What? How? When?"  
He spat out the mouthful of threads he'd taken when he went down

" I found it the day before we got married." She straightened her sewing.

" Why did you never tell me?"

" I think under the circumstances at that time it was highly inappropriate. We watched her go, Victor. Telling you about her grave would have just been like binding her here again when she had just left. "

He couldn't refute that. But he'd been dreaming of her in the past few months; once the honeymoon period of his marriage to Victoria wore off. He'd attributed it to the stress of having to deal with the Everglots as in-laws.

Victoria was looking up now, straight-backed, in her arm-chair.

" Victor, there's been something I've been meaning to tell you."

"Oh? besides the fact you knew where her grave was and didn't tell me?" The last few words hissed out. Victor almost couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth.

" Oh do stop it, I'm trying to tell you something important. Do you want to know where it is or not?"

" Yes."

" I love you Victor. But I don't think I've reached the stage where I would die for you. I don't think I ever will. You've read Wuthering Heights?"

"Victoria, you insisted on reading it every night. And cried buckets at the end."

"I am Linton and she is Heathcliff, in a sense. We both love you. But she is heath and gorse and the eternal rocks below and I am but foliage. We last only TILL DEATH DO US PART.  
I don't expect you to pass on together with me; to move on together with me. But all I ask of you now, in exchange for this knowledge, is that you stay with me till then. Unless you men are too blind that you don't even realise that you love her .Would you dream of her otherwise?"

"It could be because of the stress of meeting your parents."

"Don't be silly, Victor. Wake up."

How had she known? But he loved her for that. He did. But recently he'd begun to realise that in the short time he'd known Emily that he'd loved her too. Acceptance of the fact that he must die to marry her had come uncannily easily to him,even with the shock and despair that Victoria was about to be married off to another.

Victor looked up. His eyes met Victoria's, glassy and emotional from the conversation. But there was a grim finality in their brown depths and a suppressed quiver to her slight chin; almost as if she'd knew the choice he was going to make and accepted it.

" All my life, I've waited for marriage and hoped that it would have been with someone I relatively loved. And it's come upon me at the expense of someone's else's dreams despite the rather innocent outlook Emily took ; that she was doing it to me. She wasn't, it wasn't her fault that her's were taken away from her. She gave you to me, Victor; now all I can do at the end of it all is give you back to her when my time with you has ended. Go to her. Tell her to wait. I'm pregnant by the way. 42nd street Cemetery. 2nd row from the entrance, 3rd from the left. Take the bouquet with you, it's in my sewing basket."

"WHAT?"

Victoria was laughing now through silvery tears. " I've known for some time; go to her. Tell her to wait. You've enough heart to love both of us, but all I ask is just not at the same time. With the baby coming you'd need the extra space.

" I love you Victoria. I'll stay with you; till the end. " He went over and awkwardly pecked her on her cheek; who but her would tolerate the idea of her husband loving another woman secretly?. She reached up, held his hand to her cheek and then let him go.

Victor bounded out of the house in strides. Heading for her.

He found it, a weathered white stone upright in a row of slightly staggered ones.

Emily  
Born 14 Feburary 1870  
Disappeared 19 August 1887  
" While she was never found,  
We hope and we know in our hearts  
That she has moved on to a better place."

Victor knelt beside it. Placed the bouquet with its roses and lilies and babies' breath beside it.

" I remember you, Emily. Rising out of the earth with your veil streaming and frightening the wits out of me. I remember you lending me a hand..well. Leg bone when I ran from you and climbed up a cliff in fright. I remember your girlish excitement as you gave me Scrap. I remember you twirling and dancing wildly in moonlight the night of my deceit. Trusting me with deep brown eyes. Tossing your head in a spoilt penchant when you discovered the 'other woman'. The look in your eyes when we played an unspoken duet. Taking the blow meant for me and telling Barkis to "Get Out". Setting me free. Dissolving into butterflies."

He paused, drew breath and continued.

"It took me so very long to realise it, almost 2 years. But I love you Emily. In the short time I knew you, longer than first meetings with Victoria, I somehow fell in love with you. I've been looking for you since that day you left, unknowingly. I don't know if you're still waiting for me or moved on. But if I know you I think you're still around me somehow, somewhere. Your essence hasn't completely left us. Wait for me Emily. I'll come to you when it's my time or wait in the Land of the Dead till you appear again. I love Victoria, and I'm glad you let me go to her. But I love you too. "

A flicker of white in the corner of his eye. a shiver of apprehension running down his back. A small white butterfly alights on the rough rugged marble. Flutters its' wings almost as if in acknowledgement. And lifts off again.

Victor got up and left to go back to his pregnant wife.

Wait.  
PREGNANT?

The magnitude of the statement finally sank in.

And then he walked straight into a lamp-post. Again.

Somehow he could have sworn that he heard a throaty laugh: " Silly"


End file.
